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Windows 7: Missing desktop icons and taskbar

I have gone through a number of posts on this problem and tried them but they did not work for me. Here is my problem:

Yesterday a user complained that there laptop had slowed down in recent days. I went ahead and ran msconfig the I deleted most of the programs that were running on startup. I also stopped some services. The PC speed improved but when the user restarted the laptop there were no icons or taskbar.

I pressed ctrl-alt-del and started task manager. I started explorer.exe and my computer showed up with the drives on the machine. I also ran sfc /scannow and it did give any errors, i created another profile and it has the same results. When I right click on the desktop nothing shows up. I booted into safe mode and there are no restore points to recover to.

I suspect the problem is registry related and was caused by me deleting the startup programs. I am not sure how I can restore the laptop without reinstalling it.

I would be more curious as to exactly what services you disabled. Nothing in startup should prevent proper boot.
Did you check their dependencies before deactivating them?
Sometimes even we more knowledgeable folks get in a rush and forget to do the simple things.

I did not disable any services as such but changed them from automatic to manual. I did this to services like webclient, ipod services and adobe services. Its booting properly and one is able to login but no icons. I do admit I did the changes in a rush because I do it all the time to slow machines. There was a curious application I removed from startup which was fpplock. Let me try recreate the registry entry and reboot.

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